Task complete

If it hasn’t already happened by the time you read this, it will happen soon: @everyword‘s seven-year mission to tweet “every word in the English language” has come to an end. I hope you’ve all enjoyed the ride!

My plan is to write a more complete post-mortem on the project later. In the mean time, this post contains some links to things that followers of @everyword might find interesting or useful.

The future of @everyword

But first, a word about what’s next for @everyword. Don’t unfollow just yet! My plan at the moment is to let the account rest for a bit, and then run “@everyword Season 2,” starting over from the beginning of the alphabet. Before I do that, I’d like to find a more thorough word list, and also do some programming work so that the bot is less likely to experience failures that interrupt service.

ANAGRAMATRON finds tweets that are anagrams (i.e., contain exactly the same characters but in a different order) and posts them in juxtaposition. Check it out on tumblr as well.

Thank you!

The response to @everyword has been overwhelming. When I started the project in 2007, I never would have dreamed that the account would one day have close to 100k followers. And if you’re one of those followers, thank you! It’s a great feeling to have made something that so many people have decided to make a daily (or, uh, half-hourly) part of their lives.

I view @everyword as a success, and I want to note here that I owe this success to all of my friends and family who encouraged me along the way and helped to make @everyword a topic of conversation. I am very bad at finding value in the things I make, and I’m especially bad at self-promotion. Without the help of the people close to me, I’m sure that @everyword would have completed its task in obscurity—if it completed its task at all.